In the spring of 1954, Haley and His Comets left Essex Records for New York-based
Decca Records. Their first session, on April 12, 1954, yielded
Rock Around the Clock,
which would become Haley's biggest hit and one of the most important
records in rock and roll history. The song was written by
Max C. Freedman and
James E. Myers (the latter under the pseudonym "Jimmy De Knight") in 1952.
photographer unknown
The song was originally the
B side of the record; the
A side was
Thirteen Women (And Only One Man In Town). The success of
Rock Around the Clock is attributed to its use in the soundtrack of the film
Blackboard Jungle (
link below),
which was released on March 19, 1955. The song, which was re-released
to coincide with the film, then shifted to the single's
A-side, rose to
the top of the American musical charts that summer and stayed there for
eight weeks, the first rock and roll record to do so.
According to the official record sheet from the session, the musicians on the famous recording are :
The original arrangement of the song bore little resemblance to the
version recorded by Haley, and was in fact closer to a popular
instrumental of the day called
The Syncopated Clock (written by
Leroy Anderson). I've never heard this version but I have a feeling it is like a
cover made by the
Belgian pop group,
Telex. which is interesting but the guts of the song are not there (
link below). The verse melody of
Rock Around the Clock does bear a very close similarity to that of the first hit by
Hank Williams,
Move It On Over, from 1947.
Haley and his Comets began performing the song on stage (Comets bass player
Marshall Lytle and drummer
Dick Richards say the first performances were in
Wildwood, New Jersey at Phil and Eddie's Surf Club), but
Dave Miller, his producer, refused to allow Haley to record it for his
Essex Records
label (a feud existed between Myers and song writer Miller). Haley
claimed to have taken the sheet music into the recording
studio at least twice, with Miller ripping up the music each time.
In 1974, the original version of the song returned to the American charts when it was used as the theme for the movie
American Graffiti and a re-recorded version by Haley was used as the opening theme for the TV series
Happy Days
during its first two seasons. In the UK, the song again reached the top
20 and as of 2013 remains the only non-Christmas single to have done so
on five separate occasions.
Rock Around the Clock is often cited as the biggest-selling vinyl rock
and roll single of all time. The exact number of copies sold has never
been audited; however, a figure of at least 25 million was cited by the
Guinness Book of World Records
in its category "Phonograph records: Biggest Sellers" from the early
1970s until the 1990s. A frequently used piece of promotion regarding
the song is that it is
said to be playing somewhere in the world every minute of the day.
Viewfinder links:
YouTube links:
'It's very hard to tell what made me first decide to play the guitar. Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley came out when I was ten, and that probably had something to do with it.'
